Neighbor News
Movie Review - Pan
Fabulous visuals wasted on ill-conceived prequel on Peter Pan's arrival in Neverland
Pan ** (out of 5) (PG) For anyone who finds these comments unduly harsh, please note that I’m not the one who set the tone. When the producers decided to call this thing PAN, just what sort of review did they expect? I’m only maintaining the natural balance between stimulus and response. Basic science. Laws of Physics. Circle of Life. Whatever.
Soooo, what we have here is a live-action prequel to the oft-told fantasy about Peter Pan and Neverland, answering origins questions no one in his right mind ever asked, or creator J.M. Barrie ever dreamt would matter. Even worse, his classic fable was written and set in Victorian England, while this movie has Peter first landing in Neverland during WW II. Without Marty McFly’s time-traveling DeLorean, how did he establish himself in that realm about 50 years later than when he flew Wendy and the boys to the party he’d been hosting?
What we get is a tedious tale of Peter as a timid orphan unwilling to believe he’s The One in the prophecy who will save Neverland from Blackbeard’s tyranny. That’s a dash of Oliver Twist, with a pinch of Star Wars, a dollop of Narnia, and every other story about underdogs discovering special powers and heroic destinies to conquer unimaginable evils and save whatever realm the author(s) whipped up to house their heroics. His familiar nemesis, Captain Hook, is more of a frenemy/ally in this tale (a Han Solo to his Luke is several respects), adding to the bafflement of Peter bonding with a two-handed Hook half a century after Mr. Barrie’s original tale of their clashes, when Hook’s hand total had been halved.
On the plus side, everyone involved in art design and all the the visual elements totally rocked their pieces of this otherwise blah pie. Surrealist fantasy master Terry Gilliam would have been pleased to use their creations in one of his films. Too bad the script let them down. The best way to watch this would be on a large 3-D screen, keeping the music and sound effects, but deleting the dialog. Most could do better dubbing their own, as the Mystery Science Theater 3000 gang used to do with vintage sci-fi clunkers. Loose the wisecracking robots in the corner!!!! (10/9/15)